Two Charged in Failed |ISIL Terror Conspiracy

(CN) – Two men, one from Massachusetts, the other from Rhode Island, have been charged with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Justice Department announced. David Wright, also known as Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq, of Everett, Mass., was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice on June 3 and taken into custody. Nicholas Rovinski, alternatively known as Nuh Amriki or Nuh al Andalusi, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was arrested on Thursday and is expected to make his first appearance in Boston Federal Court today. Wright and Rovinski are charged with conspiring with each other, unknown conspirators and Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, Wright’s uncle, who lived in Roslindale, Massachusetts, until his death on June 2, 2015. Rahim was shot and killed after he attacked law enforcement officers in a Roslindale parking lot. Investigators allege that, beginning no later than May 2015, Wright, Rovinski and Rahim conspired to commit attacks and kill persons inside the United States, which they believed would support ISIL’s objectives. They say that to further that plan, the conspirators planned to attack and behead a person referred to in court documents as “Intended Victim-1,” a resident of New York, who had organized a conference in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015, featuring cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. But the court documents also indicated that the plan changed abruptly on June 2, when Rahim called Wright and told him that he no longer planned to carry out the planned beheading in New York. Instead, investigators said, Rahim told Wright he was going to attack police officers in Massachusetts within the next day or two. Wright responded by urging Rahim to wipe his laptop computer and to destroy his phone so that they could not be searched by law enforcement and also advised him to make a will, the court documents say. The two men face 15 years in prison, lifetime supervised release and fines of $250,000 each.